A photo of the gatehouse taken between 1962 abd 1973, according to a National Park Service report. (Click to enlarge)

The watchtower, affording a sentry a 360-degree view of the Atlantic Ocean, Shrewsbury River and Sandy Hook Bay, and the building that anchors it were built for the Army in 1942 by the Works Project Administration. Cost: $3,472.

This was in the days when Sandy Hook was a defense outpost, not a park. And though documentation about the structure is scant, the author of a historic structure report issued by the National Park Service in 2004 writes that the “building was completed in May 1942, suggesting that the structure may have been constructed as part of the national defense effort brought on by the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941.”

Of the three readers who wrote in, only Sandra Talarico got the location right. Wade Davis and Les Hathaway mistook it for the Red Bank DPW building and the top of the building at West Front Street and Boat Club Way in Red Bank, respectively.